TAP Air Portugal announces hundreds of flight cancellations

However, as the Union of Civil Aviation Pilots (SPAC) states, the airline is also short of pilots, cabin crew, and aircraft, independently from the parental leave periods, so the reasons cited by TAP are not considered to be entirely accurate.

“Unless the legislation that regulates parental leave is a novelty this year, we are facing an attempt to prepare public opinion to make it plausible to cancel more than 400 flights between November and December”, quotes a recent statement by SPAC.

On the other hand, the airline has recently announced that 150 employees are preparing to take days off in November and December. Among them, 40 are reported to be aircraft pilots. Nevertheless, according to the Union, the cancellations are unjustifiable under the current situation stated by the carrier.

The news comes after previous disruptions considerably influenced the flight schedules due to a recent three-day strike of workers at Lisbon airport, resulting in more than 60 flight cancellations at the time. Additionally, in early summer, passengers in Portugal were severely affected by long waiting queues, as well as cancelled or delayed flights across all airports in the country.

Despite the disruptions and decreased staff capacity, the airports in Portugal still managed to process a high number of local and international travellers. According to data from the National Institute of Statistics (INE), 24.3 million passengers have transited the country’s airports during the first half of the year, 344 per cent more when compared to the same period in 2021. Humberto Delgado Airport in Lisbon alone has been a transit hub for up to 12.1 million passengers, accounting for 49.8 per cent of the total number of reported travellers.

However, although tourism is slowly resuming in Portugal, the aforementioned figures are still lower than those registered in the pre-pandemic years.

 

Source: schengenvisainfo.com